


The Half That's Alive

by blessedharlot



Category: The Great Library Series - Rachel Caine
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Character Death, Dad Wolfe, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Grief/Mourning, burial, post-Smoke and Iron
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-17
Updated: 2019-04-16
Packaged: 2020-01-15 06:30:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18493318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blessedharlot/pseuds/blessedharlot
Summary: Some losses are just too great. In the immediate aftermath of his brother’s death in the Coliseum, Jess struggles to keep himself intact.





	The Half That's Alive

Jess didn’t notice the slimy scrape of his boots on the ancient stones under him. He didn’t feel the raw skin of his hands scrabbling for purchase on the crumbled walls that were stiflingly close.

All he knew was that just up ahead, climbing through the same cramped, ancient tunnel, were the rotten, putrid Curia of the Great Library. The Artifex. The Archivist.

And their protector, Zara Cole.

He knew he’d be the single most likely person in the Coliseum to crack into their sealed escape route. So he’d slipped away from the others - from Morgan’s watchful eye - and scanned every nook and panel and wall too ordinary to look suspicious.

And when he’d found another trapdoor to their path out, he had taken it. Without hesitation.

He couldn’t see them from here; he was staying too far back to be seen by their guard. But Jess felt like he could visualize them perfectly… the puffed up old men in gaudy, muddied robes. The protective formation Zara would have them in. Whatever traitorous guards she’d gathered around them, to preserve their worthless flesh. The low rumble of that many feet marching quickly toward an escape they didn’t deserve.

Jess had few directional cues, but he guessed they might be headed toward the harbor.

Jess moved carefully and quietly, and fast -- hugging the walls and riding the force of his razor-sharp rage down the passage. He lost track of time, his only thoughts of silently stalking his prey.

The echoing quality of the sounds up ahead faded, and then stopped. Jess thought they might have found their exit from the tunnel, and kept pursuing them without stopping. A minute later, the rock underneath him started a steep, nearly unwalkable angle down, and he hugged the wall to get a look at what awaited him around the barely-sunlit patch of sand showing a few feet below.

The tunnel emptied into a rocky corner of a beach. The shadows of big boulders nearby suggested he’d have partial cover when he exited. But he first needed to know where his quarry was, and just how many guards they’d managed. Jess thought he’d counted at least four in the tunnel, and he couldn’t know how many might have met them on the beach.

Nor could he know how many were looking back to watch this tunnel exit.

At least his own muddy clothes helped him blend into the weathered stone and sand around him. He craned and scoured as much as he could, but he saw no scouts watching for him.

So he took the plunge, and hopped down, his boots sinking a couple of inches into the shaded sand below.

From there, behind a large rock, he had a better look at the beach. It wasn’t the sort of place that attracted tourists. Most of the boulders looked to be left over from piers and walls built elsewhere. Old rusted steam machine parts and general trash and debris littered the place, most of the way out to the sea.

Jess saw no one anywhere on the beach… except seven stumbling figures wrapped in small gray cloaks, ringed by six figures in filthy black gear.

The one in the front moved like Zara Cole.

Jess’ stomach roiled. It was Zara, with Brendan’s blood still on her. Zara protecting the men who’d tortured Wolfe, who’d hunted them all like dogs.

Zara protecting the very people who had demanded so many sacrifices of all of them.

Something new buzzed in Jess’s attention… as though he saw - or more likely, felt - some tiny movement from the tunnel exit behind him. He turned back to scan for trouble, and couldn’t see any. The rocks and rock face behind him must be sending up odd breezes, he thought, shivering in the heat. He repositioned himself to watch the retreat of the party before him.

They were running toward a small boat… and beyond the boat, there was a large ship in the bay. Jess memorized the markings, though he doubted those would stay the same once they disembarked.

That ship was made to help them slip away forever, untraceable. If Jess didn’t stop them.

He sprinted sideways to stay close, risking a bit less cover between him and the party. He spun through options as he ran. He had a weapon. With a good shot, he might take down the closest Curator, possibly two, before the guard realized what was going on. But he likely wouldn’t hit the Artifex or Archivist from here, and the guards would quickly neutralize him. He could drop a guard first instead, but couldn’t outshoot as many as would then engage him.

Even foregoing escape options, a suicide mission just couldn’t get Jess’ goal completed in time. Brendan had learned that same lesson, not long ago.

It was probably best to find a way to board the ship, he thought, as he stopped behind another large rock to watch the party board the small transport boat. If Jess could get on board, somehow, he could attack them separately, or maybe find out where they were headed. He could probably get a message to Wolfe or --

Suddenly, there was blinding pain on one side of his head, and he saw stars that weren’t in the sky just a moment ago.

The last Jess saw of the beach, it blurred in front of him, as he floated away on a wave of darkness.

 

 

Jess woke to the feel of grass against his cheek.

“Wathen, report. Now.”

Grass. Voices. Commotion. Somehow Jess was back in the Coliseum.

_No! No no no,_ Jess thought. _This can’t be happening. I had them!_

Something inside him screamed to lash out. To apprehend, to incapacitate, to harm.

Jess struggled to understand. The first voice he’d heard might have been Santi, speaking the order. But now the voice was Glain. There had been conversation, but Jess was only starting to process what the words could mean. That blow had hurt.

“... at which point,” Glain continued her report above Jess’ head. “Brightwell and I had a brief conversation that he’s still sleeping off.”

Glain. Glain had…

“Good work, Glain.” That was another voice. Morgan? Nothing was making sense.

Glain had prevented him from getting on the ship. He’d had the Curia in his hands and Glain took them away. She helped them.

His arms were slowly dragging him up out of the grass. There were feet around him… a crowd, maybe. Santi definitely, and Morgan. And others.

And Glain.

Jess stood, and straightened. He closed his eyes for a moment, as though it might ease his headache.

But the headache wasn’t from the blow, he realized. It reverberated down to the phantom knife wound still throbbing in his back. His whole body ached with betrayal.

He opened his eyes, and Glain was standing there. Shoulders squared. Looking at him with… with he didn’t know what in her eyes. But it looked to him like gloating.

“You…” Jess said. “You fucking cunt.”

Glain’s eyes twinkled, and she moved from an position of ease into a fighting stance -- eyes on Jess. He stood there, the stabbing heat from his back blooming into his chest. Someone was yelling something. But he didn’t care what.

“What were you thinking??” Jess screamed at her. “I could have had Zara Cole! I could have had all them!”

She didn’t argue. She grinned at him, satisfaction in her face.

Jess knew he stood on a patch of ground on the Coliseum floor. There must be someone else around besides her, but he couldn’t hear anyone else and couldn’t see anyone around them.

Just Glain.

He felt something break inside of him, and then quickly disappear… like the ends of a snapped rope slithering away forever.

And he tore forward and plowed a shoulder into Glain’s chest as hard as he possibly could.

He aimed to land on top but threw too much weight onto her, and she spun him around easily to slam his shoulders down to the ground. It only made him madder, so he got an elbow across her nose. It made contact, and he used his whole body to shove her off of him.

Glain grabbed a solid hank of his hair as she fell away and pulled him with her, which gave him the momentum to bring a heavy right swing against her cheek, and get a decent kick into her side ribs as they scrabbled.

He was making solid contact, more than he ever thought he’d managed on Glain. _Good,_ he thought. _Hurt her._

The next moment he was on top of her, whaling at her head and shoulders. He vaguely heard a scream that he thought might be his, and he heard someone cry out his name. But that was a far away echo that may as well have been Brendan calling for him.

Glain was slow now to fight back, though her eyes glinted just as sharply as they ever had. She reached one arm up toward his face, and he grabbed it with both hands to slam it down at a bad angle. He landed another punch before he realized her other free arm with motionless. She had a look behind her eyes that he couldn’t place. Something calculating and patient. Jess just felt himself get madder and raised his fist again.

Mid-swing, some unseen thing slammed against Jess’ head. Again.

This time, it felt like a rock wrapped in velvet had plowed through his skull.

The slow realization that this was some sort of Obscurist influence fogged across his brain, just as he fell away from consciousness back into the dark.

 

 

This time, Jess clawed his way out of the dark. He came to with his wrists and ankles straining with all his strength, his still throbbing back arched up off whatever he lay on.

Jess couldn’t make out anything around him. But a deep, cold thing clawed at his insides and demanded he run. Fight. Kill. Get away. Get out of these restraints. Get out of this skin he was trapped in.

The straps at his wrists and ankles swarmed him, dragged him down into the enemy inside of him. The pain in his head was excruciating.

"Stop, son!"

The words Jess had heard were quiet, and ludicrous. They made no sense. But something about the voice kept him from questioning it. Before even piecing together that he had been beating his head against the metal frame of the cot beneath him, Jess stopped doing it.

His head throbbed… but he thought it might at least be resting on the cot now. He wasn’t sure. But the icy, burning thing in Jess’ chest was still there, still pulling, still smothering. Now that he lay still for even a moment, the cold thing extended its reach, spread out, filling him up from every direction. It was withering his insides. A sickly numbness was transforming Jess’ internal organs to green, deathly vapor, piece by piece. He could feel it. It had taken Brendan and it would take him too.

"Take a deep breath," the voice said.

Jess couldn't. The thing was killing him. His back was split open. He was dying and there was no more air.

"Feel the air in your lungs," the calm voice said. "There's plenty of it."

Jess thought for an instant he might have felt something besides the thing destroying him. He just barely felt something gentle against his shoulders... two warm hands.

"Clean air. There’s nothing here but clean air," the voice said. "Breathe it in."

Jess discovered his throat still existed - and had closed up - just as those muscles slowed down their spasm, and began to offer him little sips of air. He considered for a moment whether he truly wanted them.

"Breathe, Jess," the kind voice said.

The burning cold inside of him was still there. But somehow he was breathing.

A stone ceiling finally, barely came into focus above him.

At the top of his field of vision, Jess could see a faint, familiar form. The blurred contours of Scholar Wolfe's hair.

Wolfe's hands were on his shoulders. Somehow the weight of them felt different than the straps. Wolfe wasn't holding him down, though Jess thought he probably could. He was anchoring him to something. To his voice.

“A big sky full of breathable air,” he said to Jess calmly.

The cold, dead thing inside still had a piece of Jess, and wasn’t letting go. But Wolfe now had another piece in his own gentle grasp.

"Breathe in," Wolfe said, "And out."

Jess lay there, half-dead. He had nothing he could do but listen to Wolfe's voice. So he did, and he breathed.

Limp on the cot, Jess breathed, and felt the warmth of Wolfe’s hands shift subtly on his shoulders as he breathed along with him.

“Yes, good,” Wolfe said.

The cold, dead thing was still there. Crouching in a corner of Jess, staring at him. It wasn’t attacking again, for now. But Jess didn’t have any idea how to fight it off. It had Brendan, so it had Jess’ scent too.

Jess thought he might never have felt as scared and small as he felt right at this moment.

“Let me go,” Jess whispered. His voice was weak and embarrassing, and he wasn’t sure who is was talking to.

“No,” Wolfe said kindly.

“Let me go please,” Jess whispered to Wolfe. “Please send me away. Give me a tile and send me away.”

Jess might have felt the tiniest flinch in Wolfe’s hands, but he wasn’t sure. Wolfe didn’t reply to him.

Without warning, Jess felt himself shaking and shivering limply on the cot. Something was pressing up from his spine and bubbling out of him, and he heard himself begin to weep.

He couldn’t remember crying, not like this. Not in years. Not even at the ink-licker. This wasn’t a wet face. This was cadence of sobs playing him. Jess didn’t recognize himself.

“I failed,” Jess cried. The finality of it shuddered through him like stone. “I failed, I failed for good.”

He felt his arms try to curl around him and stop meekly at the ends of the restraints.

“It was my job!” Jess sobbed.

He felt one arm of Wolfe’s cross his chest, and another brush his hair back from his face.

“Nobody else was going to do it!”

Jess tried to explain the urgency, the constant urgency, all his life. But there were no words for it. So Jess cried more. And more.

He cried until he felt emptier than he’d ever felt. But the tears still came.

“Listen to me,” he heard Wolfe say, stroking his hair. “Jess, are you listening?”

Jess couldn’t stop the tears. But he willed himself to listen.

“There was nothing more you could have done,” Wolfe said firmly. “You did everything you possibly could... to take care of your brother... to take care of everyone you love. Jess.”

Wolfe stroked his hair as Jess shuddered through a few more weak sobs.

“Jess Brightwell,” Wolfe said gently. “You and I can be as clever as we wish. As clever as it is possible to be. We’re still not omnipotent.”

Jess managed a deep breath between sobs, and tried to hear Wolfe’s words with all his might.

“We both have to find a way to forgive ourselves that flaw,” Wolfe said.

Jess felt the tears slow, just a little more. Wolfe’s words had both sunken inside of him and floated very far away, all at once. He wasn’t sure he understood, but his urge to flee felt a bit more bearable.

“Jess, I couldn’t be prouder of you,” Wolfe continued quietly. “Of who I’ve watched you become. Of who you’ve always been. With so little help from anyone else. With your giant, ruthless heart.”

Wolfe moved both of his hands to Jess’ chest, and brought his face down closer to his ear.

“I know your heart is broken,” he said to Jess, his voice softly cracking. Wolfe slowly smoothed Jess’ shirt with one hand, and Jess desperately hoped he wouldn’t pull the warmth of his hand away.

“Jess. It will heal, I promise you that. I promise you, the pain will lessen.”

Another little reservoir of tears spilled up and out. And Jess let Wolfe smooth the same patch of his shirt.

“But Jess, you must let your loved ones love you through it,” Wolfe said. “Even when it’s intolerable to let them near you. You must allow us.”

Jess forced himself to take in a shuddering gulp of air at that.

“And you will find,” Wolfe continued. “That you are some other person by the end of all this. And that will turn out to be a tolerable thing. You may even like him better than the other Jesses you’ve known. He couldn’t smell any worse than this one.”

Jess felt a bark of a laugh escape his throat. And his breath began to settle.

He decided not to look around too closely inside of himself, for the moment, and just appreciate his steady breathing for a minute.

He felt Wolfe shift around, and someone else close by moved. And his wrists and ankles felt cooler air against them.

“Against Glain’s wishes,” Jess heard Santi say, “I’m going to request that you don’t punch anybody else today, Jess.”

Jess nodded, then discovered with some surprise that he was capable of swinging himself up to a seated position on the cot. For an instant, he ached for Wolfe’s warmth again, but steeled himself to do without it.

He was in a room... at the Coliseum, he expected. Old musty stone walls, a cot freshly brought in for him. Santi leaned on a crate nearby, an assessing look on his face. Wolfe sat on a stool at the end of the cot, watching him closely with a different kind of look.

“Glain,” Jess said, and realized his throat was raw. “She was… she was giving me something to hit. Wasn’t she?”

Santi nodded. “Her bereavement gift to you.”

“Sweet girl, that Glain,” Wolfe said.

Jess looked around, startled by another realization. “Where’s Morgan?” he asked.

“Morgan will be along,” Wolfe said quite carefully. “Catch your breath.”

Jess wasn’t sure how to take that. In sudden fear, he scanned his own actions… the ones that he could remember. But he didn’t remember doing her harm. “Is she okay?” he asked.

“She’s fine,” Santi said, reassuringly. “She wanted to be here. She got pulled away.”

Jess shuddered, and felt some of his sense drop back down into his head.

Santi pushed a canteen into his hand.

“Sip it slowly,” Santi said. “And don’t throw it at me. I’m not as nice as Glain.”

Jess smiled ruefully and drank. It was water. He felt steadier after a few sips.

“Where’s Brendan?” Jess asked, willing his throat not to tighten up again, and not entirely succeeding.

“For now,” Wolfe said. “He’s in the morgue. You don’t have to decide what’s next until you’ve had a chance to calm yourself.”

“I’m calmer,” Jess said, and he made preparations for what he hoped would be a successful attempt at standing up.

“Jess,” Wolfe warned gently.

“Look, unless you have something else for me to do,” Jess said as calmly as he could manage, “I’m going to tend to my brother.”

“There’s plenty of work still to do,” Santi said. “You missed some elections, but there’s many more conversations that need to be had today.”

“About what?” Jess laughed mirthlessly. “Sorry, about what that actually concerns me? For the Library I’m not a part of?”

“Jess!” Santi exclaimed quietly.

“Look, I’m not still out of my head,” Jess said as evenly as he could. “I’m not angry, I’m not trying to hurt anyone. But every one of you has a real post to return to. I’m... what exactly? A High Garda private, with five minutes of seniority? Shall I go guard half a dead Spartan while the Library decides its new fate? I was just barely still a part of the Library before all this, and that was before this town killed my brother.”

He stopped and listened to the silence, and pondered what he’d just said.

Then he downed another big gulp of water, shoved the canteen at Santi and headed past him.

“I’ll be back after I get my business taken care of,” he said.

As he neared the door, it swung open.

Morgan stood there, dark circles under her eyes and a smile on her face. She ran and pulled him into her arms.

“Hey, there,” Jess said into her hair, hugging her back. Her hands brushed the spot still burning on his back. “Are you okay?”

“Me?” Morgan pulled back far enough to look at him. “Of course, why wouldn’t I be?”

“Well, you did have to tranquilize a half-crazed sewer rat,” Jess offered.

“I’m sorry!’ Morgan said mournfully. “Glain said I interrupted you.”

“You interrupted me doing stupid damage. Morgan, will you come with me to-”

Jess realized Khalila was just inside the door. She stood awkwardly, giving him an unreadable look.

“Are you-” Jess began. “Ah, damn it to hell. I didn’t hit you, did I?”

Khalila shook her head. “You didn’t strike me. I’m uninjured. And I’m glad you’ve come back to your senses.”

It didn’t sound like she was done, but she stopped talking. If she wasn’t offering it up right now, Jess decided to wait to ask what else was going on.

“Morgan,” he asked. “Will you come with me?”

“Of course.”

Without asking any further questions, she wrapped an arm around his waist and guided him through the door into the hall outside.

Jess looked back and made eye contact with Santi, who inclined his head toward Jess. Jess looked over at Wolfe, still on the stool, leaning on his folded arms. Jess met Wolfe’s eyes, and wished for his gaze to communicate something meaningful. But he wasn’t sure what to say, and Wolfe’s eyes looked heavy enough already.

Jess put his gaze on the floor as he left the room.


End file.
